perpetual-goodvibes

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you don't even have to ask. i'll beg.

Brennan Lee Mulligan / Anne Carson / Emily Wilson / Jaelyn Dennis / Anne Carson / Mitski / inanotherunivrse / Alicia Ostriker / Clarice Lispector / Source Unknown / souldistracted / @kermit-coded / Source Unknown / @professor-pants / souldistracted / Ricardo Martinez / Anne Carson / Phoebe Bridgers / @thegirlhoodtheory / Silas Denver Melvin / Mary Oliver / Bombay Bicycle Club / @autopsytableromance / Margaret Atwood

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the curse is lifted! you are no a beast no more! congratulations! but you'll never forget the way they looked at you, will you.

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these two lines are so !!!!!!!

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Musicals are time loops. Every night, the same thing happens except for a few minor differences. It always ends the same. If you want the characters to do something different or to make better choices, too bad. The actors are bound by the script and the score. The only way for the time loop to end is for the show to close. But you (the audience) don't want the show to close, nor do the actors who would like to be employed. It's a lose/lose situation. For the actors, audience, technicians, and for the characters, who are forever stuck in the same stretch of time.

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one thing about me is that i will lose my mind about the personification of the house

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Chore Scorpion: I come from the toughest meanest place you can imagine. I want to be gentle, I want to die gently, but It seems that when life gets hard I have to get harder to match.

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Paul Tran, "Judith Slaying Holofernes: Oil on Canvas: Artemisia Gentileschi: 1620" from All the flowers kneeling.

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also a poem from the new, unreleased collection. very possibly my own all-time favourite.

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continuing to follow a beloved mutual but tag blocking all the fandoms they post about. baby i LOVE you but there is a demonic force that controls your interests.

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Hermann Hesse, from Siddhartha

Text ID: what remains from all that seems holy to us? What remains?

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“He is constructing a god out of my body and I do not stop him. This will make a ghost of him and me. But tonight he needs an altar and I’m not here to be brave.”

— Dream Girl, Clementine von Radics

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the first law of tragedies: the end is already written and inevitable. the second law of tragedies: your actions are all your own and you can choose to get off this ride whenever you want. the third law of tragedies: we both know that you are never going to do that.

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“People who didn’t live pre-Internet can’t grasp how devoid of ideas life in my hometown was. The only bookstores sold Bibles the size of coffee tables and dashboard Virgin Marys that glowed in the dark. I stopped in the middle of the SAT to memorize a poem, because I thought, This is a great work of art and I’ll never see it again.”

— Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir No 1 (via elesheva)

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I found out about a 2022 translation of the Metamorphoses that I have not read yet (a crime), it's by Stephanie McCarter. Some reviews say it should "come with a trigger warning" and I think that's the best way to advertise a translation of Ovid.

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Richard Siken’s Editor’s Notes ‘Love From a Distance’ Spork issue 1.2 (Some screenshots of, hence the disjointedness)

Highlighted parts:

The graveyard shift has a certain quality to it. It makes you feel responsible, but you don’t know what you’re responsible for. Saving the world, maybe. Or at least keeping everything okay until dawn.

Our true stories were lousy. Our stories were slick black things that we spit out of our mouths onto the table in front of us. We were trying to sell something.

Ask someone to tell you a true story and you get a murkiness. Ask someone to tell you a lie and they’ll betray themselves. (The body always betrays itself—it blushes, it trembles…)

Now, there is the story that must be told, and there is the story that can’t be told, and sometimes they are the same story.

We are, all of us, throwing our voices here. Honestly though, I’m not sure why we’re doing it. It’s fun, sure. It means something, maybe. But I suspect, dear reader, that underneath all the gruff and bluster we are simply saying we love you. 

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Anne-Marie Zanetti, (Australian, b. 1965) “Abundant”, oil on linen, 85 x 145 cm

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In Case I Never Wake Up

by: @hikovsky (pseudopresser on ao3)

588 words, rated G

———

I sleep with my hands pressed to my neck.

Two fingers on each side, feeling the same steady pulse.

It’s a precaution, just in case I never wake up.

I need my hands to be the first to know that I’ve died.

- @doreensladle

———

Riz considers, for the hundredth time, that he might be going insane.

He’s curled up on his side, staring wide at his dark bedroom wall. He’s thinking that if he just concentrates hard enough, he’ll be able to make the screaming in his head quiet down. It’s hard to have a coherent thought at all. The room seems to be fading at the corners and moving back and forth, despite his still rigid position.

Riz considers, for the hundredth time, that he might be dying.

Surely this is what Death must feel like. It certainly doesn’t feel like life. Riz rolls over to lay on his back, but his muscles immediately tense up again, his bones rubbing together in a way that lights his already charred brain on fire. He pretends to not notice the feeling. What is pain, if not another condition one must live with?

The news of his dad’s death reached them 5 days ago. Riz struggled to parse the days apart. It felt as though he'd had a hundred nights like this one, but also like the first night had never ended. He was stuck in this life forever. What a terrible, terrible fate.

He rolls over to his other side, curling up and shoving his palms into his eyes. The room feels like it’s rotating on an invisible axis, never slowing. Could he die this way? It seems as though the whiplash of connecting and disconnecting with reality could be enough to cause a heart to short-circuit and stop beating. A lot of people wish for Death. Riz is terrified of it.

Riz sits up in bed, ruffling his hair and shaking his head, trying to loosen up the tension in his neck. Bringing his hands down, he rubs deep pressure into the tissue of his shoulders, aching for relaxation. His hands come to rest on either side of his neck, and he feels his pulse, faintly. Riz brings two fingers to rest at the points where he can feel the beat the strongest. It’s quick, and it’s hard to feel, but it’s there. He’s alive. He’s obsessed with the pulse. If he wants to be sure he’s still alive, he can’t move his hands.

Realizing that the room feels much more stable than it did before, Riz takes the chance to lie back down, still with fingers pressed to either side of his neck. He closes his eyes, breathing deeply.

Death has always terrified Riz. It’s the uncertainty, really. What does it feel like? How long does it last? What comes after? Nothing? Something? Every possibility fuels his anxiety more. The only certainty Death offers is how it affects those left alive. It moves unexpectedly and ruthlessly, leaving an empty space behind. If Death could be so cruel to the living, how might it treat its victims? This is the fear Riz sits with now, praying that his father might be spared from any cruelties.

A tear falls down his face, followed by another. Riz lays, silently crying, with his fingers pressed to his neck. This way, at least, he can be sure he is still alive. Despite the persisting pain in his joints, sleep finds Riz through the steady heartbeat pulsing against his finger pads.

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chapter 1/3

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Big shoutout to Ellie for inspiring this work and endorsing my writing :,) Find them at @doreensladle